Stronger Than Yesterday
by linniestorm
Summary: Faith has an opportunity to vent, and uses it to explain her actions to someone else.


  
**[ Stronger Then Yesterday ]**

**TITLE: **Stronger Than Yesterday  
**AUTHOR:** Lindsay Ince [chicago_heat@hotmail.com]  
**DISCLAIMER:** Faith et al. belong to Fox and Joss. Despite the various occasions when they might not fully deserve them.  
**ARCHIVE: **http://www.stas.net/blurred**  
DISTRIBUTION: **Ask, and ye shall receive in due course of an e-mail and a look at your site.**  
RATING: **PG-13  
**SPOILERS: **None really, apart from the usual S3 Faith actions and S1 Angel.**  
SUMMARY:** Faith has an opportunity to vent, and uses it to explain her actions to someone else.**  
AUTHORS NOTES: **In response to BuffyAngelImprov #6: glimmer -- fury -- ease -- silence**  
FEEDBACK:** Always nice, especially tips as I haven't written any Faith before.

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Faith walked slowly down the corridor, her arm held firmly by the elbow by an overweight, mustached prison guard. He deposited her in her cell, which was sparse and bare. A bed, a table, a chair, set of drawers was all contained within it. Opening the drawers one after another she examined the sum total of her possessions. If you could really call them that. Clothes: three sets of identical prison garb, blue denim. Toiletries, a few cosmetics. Her eye came to rest on a small bound book in the corner of the top drawer. It was black and spiral bound, there was no outward signs of ownership and when she flicked through it her eyes met with page after page of looping, irregular handwriting, written in haste, reflecting the speed with which her thoughts had clawed to get out of her mind and onto the page. As she read some of the entries she was struck with the fury in which she purged herself. Still it had not relieved her guilt, or eased her conscience. As she read the entries again she felt every word afresh in her heart. The book was a little worn now and some of the spirals had bent towards each other in places. She remembered the day she had acquired it. It was on a visit from Angel. When the bell rang to signal the end of visiting hours he had passed over in silence a parcel wrapped in brown paper and left before she had a chance to ask him what it was for. She had taken it back to her cell with her, almost hiding it from the others, unwilling to let them know what the parcel contained. It was her one secret. One secret in an institution of none, where privacy did not exist and everything she was was open to others inspection. Of course, this wasn't really a secret either. The wear on the cellotape betraying the prying eyes of those on the visitors reception desk, checking the packages contents. The parcel had signalled the first mystery she had felt since she had been convicted. Almost unwilling to open it, to spoil the suspense she had finally given in to her excitement and ripped off the packaging. She had examined the cover for a moment or two, then flicked through the pages of pure white paper, instantly feeling the alienness of them to her own state. On the first page Angel had written something, something she had spent little time considering at first, but now she spent hours on:

_'Even if you feel you can't talk to or trust anyone else  
Remember you can always trust yourself.'  
- Angel_

She reached for the brown paper she had acquired and wrapped the package up neatly. not that it would matter really, as before it was posted it would be opened and poked and wrapped back up untidily. She knew the drill. It didn't mean she couldn't put care and attention into it though. It was her explaination, to those that really needed it, or who she was. What she was. She couldn't have put any of it into words before, she probably wouldn't be able to face to face. She could only hope they would read it with an open mind and make some attempt to understand why she had sent it. They were, in a bizarre way, her only family. She needed their understanding, hoped they would be, and their forgiveness if she could ever beat this thing. When she had read through the pages she had been struck with how far she had come, from sarcasm and contempt of what she was writing, of her ever getting better, to an understanding of herself and an attempt to come to terms with it and find a way to obtain redemption. As she gave the parcel to one of the guards she almost took it back, knowing that she could have it all thrown back in her face. She _had_ to trust, if she ever had any chance. She _had_ to.

_...There's something dark and evil inside me. Its deep and I can't breach it, its sealed tight, but its there. I can feel it, all the time. I can feel it every time I do something evil. I feel it. I keep on feeling it. It never goes away. I don't know where it comes from, I don't know who's to blame. I know it can't all be my fault. It can't be down to everything I've done and that alone. I've been let down too. I've been let down so badly by nearly everyone I've ever met but I'm expected to be everyone else's knight in shining armour just the same. Surely that isn't fair? Surely I should be the one being looked after for a change? Not that I would let anyone, I don't need it, but still, someone could offer..._

_...I have this face, its my disguise, my mask. I've learned to slip into it with ease so that no one suspects there's anything else there but what I let them see. I know it inside out, it's like being an actress, I play the part of Faith, and other people's reactions to me aren't to me, they're to Faith. Not many people can tell who I really am inside, perhaps that's why when I find someone who can tell me from her I gravitate towards them. Richard Wilkins, Angel. I can't think of anyone else. not even Buffy can see past the image I put out to everyone else. Two. Two people on the entire planet. that must be some kind of record. No wonder I'm fucked up beyond all recognition..._

_..It's not exactly the sort of thing that you stand up and admit to in a self-help group. You know: Evil Murderers Anonymous. My name is John Smith and I like to kill people. I'm an evil murderer who takes pleasure in the pain of other human beings. Oh yes, I think that would go down well. I try to explain that to my therapist, but she's one of those people who thinks coming to terms with crime means admitting it to yourself, forgetting about it and getting on with life. I don't think I can do it. With me, it festers if I ignore it, and when it gets to the stage where I can't ignore it it just explodes...usually in someone else's face. When I go to sleep, I see his face. Finch. Glassy eyes staring up at me like a lambs, and I want to scream every wall in this place down. Nobody would notice, or I'd end up in solitary. How do I find redemption alone? Angel does it, but he's much stronger than I am. Even with his help, I have doubts I'll be able to manage alone..._

_...What exactly is it I'm supposed to do? I just don't understand. I go to these therapy sessions, we sit there like morons for an hour, exchanging hardly a word and then she tells me to go, and acts like we've made progress! I'm glad someone thinks I'm making progress because I sure as hell don't. Stupid bitch. She doesn't know the first thing. She'll never be able to understand me, we're like chalk and cheese. She's probably had everything she ever wanted all her life, money, college, men that care about her, all the things I always wanted, prayed for, on the odd occasions I fooled myself he existed. Why are we so different that she gets everything and I get nothing?..._

_...I realise now that when I wrote that I wasn't talking about her. If I hadn't put in the subject of that point i would have immediately recognised who I was talking about. Buffy. I'm mad at her. It's not just about what happened with Wilkins, it's other things too. We have the same life her and I. We're slayers. We do the same job. In whatever cauldron they worked out that shit in the primordial oouze we were both chosen. Then why does she get all those things I described above and I don't? If we're supposed to be the same then why did we get such different lives? When I tried to get a little of what she was having she destroyed it. Richard Wilkins may have been an evil demon waiting to destroy the world but he looked after me and believe it or not he was the closest thing to a father I've ever had. He gave me those things. Money, a nice place to stay, he cared. For the first time in my life, someone did..._

_...I think I made a mistake today. I told my therapist about why I'm pissed at Buffy. She of course, launches into one of those monologues they teach you when you do a psychology degree about your inner child. The strangest thing is, she actually made sense. Well, some of it did. Is that what happens when you start listening to people and become a respectable member of society. I may have learned something, but it was also incredibly boring. It made me want to stab her, but thankfully I resisted that urge. Maybe I am on the right road after all. She said that I hated Buffy because she contradicted every dream and fantasy I'd had since I was a child. That we were the same, but different, but the same, if that makes sense. I'd dreamed about having everything that she'd had when I was little and now I knew her, I knew that life could still be crappy even if you have 'everything'. She had a father, but she doesn't see him now. She has a nice place, family, but they fight like anyone else, it isn't perfect. Not like I imagined it to be. Every now and again she might find a guy that likes her but more often than not she gets stomped on just like me. We're slayers, we're the same. We were brought up in completely different worlds we're different. We're both getting stepped on by life, we're the same..._

Buffy put down the book and sighed. Picking up the packaging she examined it carefully. The handwriting on the first address was hers, it matched with the writing inside the book, she had originally sent it to him, to Angel. Why had he sent it on? Was it for sympathy? Did he want her to feel sorry for Faith? After everything she had done. no, it wasn't Angel's style, especially after the things they had said to each other because of Faith. Whenever Angel did anything like this is was to make her understand. He knew she wouldn't listen to reason. That she wouldn't listen to anyone where Faith was concerned. She was a curious person by nature, something he knew and had obviously taken advantage of through the fact he had sent the journal directly to her instead of relaying it's contents or trying to arrange a meeting with Faith. Buffy knew she could discover far more about what drove the real Faith in the journal than exchanging conversation with her. It was the _real_ Faith that was protrayed in this journal, the writing cut through the gimmer of the confident, laid back, thrill seeking woman to the hurt little girl that had bundled herself up in an iron blanket and refused to let anyone close. A woman who refused to let anyone hurt her and reacted childishly to any attempts by responding kind with kind. A woman who used violence and terror as her tools against abuse and denigration. All the repressed emotion flowed out through the journal and filled the mind that read it with a poignant silence. 

Buffy saw through the bravado immediately and for the first time, she felt as though she understood a little about Faith. So many times before, she said she had understood her, she hadn't. She had understood the violence, she faced it everyday, but she had been equating Faith with a demon, not even stopping to consider her as a human. Now, as she thought back over her many encounters with Faith, she realised the fear and nervousness that had formed the undercurrent of her behaviour. As she thought about it more, she began to realise the error of her judgement. Faith had done evil things certainly, but hadn't she done exactly as Buffy did when she had committed Angel to hell? She had closed herself off and run away from them. Maybe they weren't so different. She had hurt people too, Faith had inadvertently shown her just what she had done to her friends and family when she had gone, all be it without swapping bodies and sleeping with someone else's boyfriend. It was the first time she had ever let herself really think about Faith's motives, and just why she had given herself up. At the time she had seen it as some trick to wrangle Angel over to her side against Buffy, designed solely to piss her off and take away yet another thing that was once hers. But the journal had changed things, the Faith in the journal was not the Faith she used to know. Could she change so quickly? In a few months could she recognise all those faults and even make any attempt to get past them? She hadn't. It had taken her much longer, she still didn't think she was over everything that had happened to her over the last few years. Maybe that was it. She's getting over it and I'm not. She's working things out and I'm not. She's getting better and I'm not.

She carefully put the journal back in its wrapping and folded the paper back over it, tying it securely. As she lifted it to wrap the corners in a small slip of paper dropped from the wrapping to the floor. She stared at it a moment, wondering where it had come from, she certainly hadn't noticed it when she unwrapped the journal. Not that her eyes had been fixed on anything but the journal. Even though she knew it was only a scrap of paper she had a disconcerting and embarrasing fear of what was written on it. Was it an insult from Faith? A plea for understanding, a visit, a call? Or was it from a far more frightening source? Picking it up, she recognised the writing as soon as it turned slightly, but read it anyway, feeling almost as though it had a power to make her read it. 

_'You need each other. Don't push her away.'_

Trust him, she thought, to try and make the piece. To point out the obvious had always been one of his strengths. While she looked at the complexity, he reminded her of the simplicity of every problem. They needed each other. They were the only ones on the planet that understood the stresses of their duty day to day. the infringements on a life, friends, plans, hopes and dreams. He knew her first instinct would be to dismiss it, however much it affected her, to wave aside and get on with life as though she had never come into contact with it. He was there, behind the scenes, gently pushing them both to admit they shared things, and they needed someone else who knew what it was like to be there. Maybe Faith was right, maybe underneath it all they were the same. Some things she said made sense. Was she ready to compare herself with Faith? Part of her was repulsed at the the thought, but part of her longed to reach out for someone who knew what it was like. Sighing, she brushed her hair out of her face and picked up the journal again. Taking it out of the wrapping again she opened it slightly, ready to read it again but stopped herself, and realising she was late for patrolling put it in her bedside drawer, to pour over later. She might not be ready to face her just yet, but she would sometime, and that was a start.

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End file.
